When I saw Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods a week ago, I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect — I knew there was some sort of twist involved, and that the movie was intended to be a critique of ultraviolent slasher films, but I’d somehow avoided any major spoilers, going in. So, I spent at least half the movie desperately trying to guess how all the narrative pieces were going to fall into place, attempting to stay one step ahead of all the clever twists (and mostly failing) — and of course there’s a fair amount of pleasure to be had from all that frantic not-knowing.

The biggest surprise, though, occurred after I’d left the theater and started mulling the whole experience over, and realized that while I’d expected something smart, snarky, and fun, what The Cabin in the Woods delivers is much, much darker and more subversive than simply cleverness for its own sake. I never would have guessed how much time I’d spend thinking about just how well the film manages to illuminate the deeply weird cultural moment we find ourselves in, and how it all comes back to John Hughes…and how maybe all we really need to know we learned from Eighties movies. Or not.

[Contains spoilers for Cabin in the Woods, The Hunger Games, and also probably The Breakfast Club.]

Considering how nerdy the Tor.com offices is (we have a shrine to Dalen Quaice, for Cthulhu’s sake) we come to agreement on a bizarrely large number of things. But that’s by no means a guarantee, so when we find ourselves on opposite sides of a particular “issue,” we figure we’ll take it to you!

Today Bridget and Ryan are arguing about ThunderCats. Specifically, are they worth the nostalgic fuss? Read our arguments for and against, then join in!

[Read more]

In the folklore of various cultures and ancient civilizations, rabbits have represented a kind of Trickster figure; in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean mythology, rabbits live on the moon. The Aztecs worshipped a group of deities known as the Centzon Totochtin, a group of 400 hard-partying rabbits who were the gods of drunkenness, and in a slightly more recent mythos, bunnies were the bête noir of a certain thousand-year-old former vengeance demon.

As we head into the weekend, I’d like to take a minute to pay tribute to some of the more memorable bunnies and assorted rabbit-like creatures who have hopped, time-traveled, and occasionally slaughtered their way through science fiction and fantasy, beginning (in no particular order), with everybody’s favorite hard-drinking, invisible lagomorph….

[Follow me down the SFF rabbit hole]

The third installment of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series picks up a month after the events of Catching Fire, and it begins with Katniss sifting through the (literal) ashes of her former life. In the opening paragraph of the novel, surrounded by the burned and broken remains of District 12, she does her best to find a point of reference, a way of locating herself in the charred heap of rubble that used to be her house, asking “How else could I orient myself in this sea of gray?”

In a sense, that question sums up the central concern of Mockingjay, and of the entire series by extension, and I think that one of the major strengths of the Hunger Games trilogy lies in the fact that, in the end, it offers up no easy answers to the problem of how to deal with unspeakable trauma, and eventually find meaning in the wake of atrocities and the moral and ethical failures perpetrated on all sides of the struggle for Panem.

[Flashbacks, echoes, and the horrors of history repeating...]

Hodor! Hodor!!! Hodorhodorhodor, you guys!!!!!

Wait, sorry—I’m just really excited. Deep breaths. Let’s try this again: check out the newest trailer for the upcoming season of Game of Thrones, which premieres on Sunday, April 1st.  I don’t want to say anything too spoilerish, so let’s just all agree that that crazy is coming, and minds will be blown. IT IS KNOWN.

I’ve written about my abiding love for Labyrinth before, most recently during Muppet Week. Not much has changed since then (not counting this news about a new graphic novel prequel to the movie) — I still think the movie deserves to be taken seriously as a truly inspired, thoughtful, subversively feminist addition to the tradition of classic coming-of-age stories which are so lovingly, and cleverly, referenced throughout.

At the same time, taking the movie seriously shouldn’t mean pretending that it’s a particularly serious film — the screenplay was, after all, written by Monty Python’s Terry Jones. And it’s filled with muppets. And, well...the antagonist is a toddler-juggling, shape-shifting weirdo with a glitter fetish who dresses (and behaves) like the tarted-up bastard offspring of Cruella de Vil and Aunty Entity.

[Below the fold: Humor, camp, diva antics and tight pants...]

I’m admittedly a bit of a soundtrack nerd; in so many cases, the right music can make or break a scene, while the wrong music can ruin the vibe faster than you can say “Ladyhawke/WangChung/GoNinjaGoNinjaGoooo.” (Though you should never actually say that, as it summons unspeakable evil).

Since we’re tackling so many Bowie albums and movies this week, I thought it might be fun to take a look how his music has been used in film and television over the years. It’s interesting to see how a scene can completely recontextualize a particular song, and the heightened emotional impact that music can bring to a moment (or even an entire series, in some cases), and so I’ve rounded up a few of my favorite examples of Bowie’s contributions to both big and small screen soundtracks. And just to make it interesting, I’m not focusing on original, made-to-order compositions, but tracks that existed independently and had a life of their own before Hollywood (or the Beeb) came calling.

[Get hooked to the silver screen...]

Over the course of Bowie Week, we’ll be focusing on many of David Bowie’s major film roles, including The Man Who Fell to Earth, The Hunger, Labyrinth, and his memorable portrayal of Nikola Tesla in The Prestige. In a career as fascinating and varied as his has been, though, the Greatest Hits approach doesn’t cover nearly enough ground. As an artist, Bowie has spent a lifetime blurring the lines between performer and stage persona: after all, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars was famously advertised with the slogan “David Bowie is Ziggy Stardust”…while, in smaller type, the words “Ziggy Stardust is David Bowie” ran across the bottom of the ad.

This confusion between creator and creation is something Bowie has played upon from the very beginning—and then there’s the fact that, over the last couple decades, he himself has become the direct inspiration for various fictional characters, from the Lucifer of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman to The Venture Bros. version of David Bowie, shapeshifting leader of The Guild of Calamitous Intent. So let’s take a look at a few of Bowie’s more interesting incarnations, both as an actor and as a character, the dreamer and the dream, beginning with his acting debut in the unsettling 1967 short film The Image.

[That’s pretty freaky, Bowie.]

Labyrinth was Jim Henson’s second collaboration with artist Brian Froud, following The Dark Crystal four years earlier. Labyrinth was clearly a very different, more expansive type of project; Henson and Froud were joined by George Lucas as executive producer, Monty Python’s Terry Jones wrote the screenplay, and rock demigod David Bowie signed on to star, as well as write and perform the movie’s soundtrack.

Whereas The Dark Crystal is often seen as Henson and Froud’s freewheeling homage to fantasy àla Tolkein, Labyrinth is much more structured and far more aware of its influences; it’s also wonderfully allusive and meta at points, filled with references to the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, L. Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll, Maurice Sendak, and Walt Disney. And yet the movie doesn’t limit itself to clever references — it’s very clearly participating in the classic tradition of works like The Wizard of Oz, the Alice books, and Where the Wild Things Are, in which a young protagonist escapes a humdrum existence into an exotic, sometimes threatening, alternative reality.

[Cue the owl attack, begin the goblin invasion, and get ready for some really tight pants...]

The Dark Crystal debuted in 1982, wedged somewhat oddly between The Great Muppet Caper and the premiere of Fraggle Rock in the Great Muppet Time Line. In terms of Jim Henson’s career, placing the film chronologically is easy; figuring out how it fits into his development as an artist is a bit more complicated.

The project that eventually became The Dark Crystal actually began several years earlier when Henson fell madly in love with the work of fantasy illustrator Brian Froud; they became friends, and Froud began collaborating with Henson and Frank Oz. With the help of David Odell, a former staff writer for The Muppet Show, they eventually produced the first live-action film to feature no human actors, only puppets and animatronic creatures.

The film was groundbreaking in many ways, and yet it was not considered a financial success upon release, and is often described as something of a “near classic” even by its fans. I’ve always harbored mixed feelings toward The Dark Crystal; even as a kid, I remember having the sense that there were so many aspects of the movie that worked…but somehow all those amazing parts never seemed to come together, in the end. And so, for the first time in years, I decided to take another look.

[“What was sundered and undone shall be whole—the two made one.”]

Tomorrow, September 24th, would have been Jim Henson’s 75th birthday, and that fact is making me feel awfully nostalgic. As a child of the eighties, I grew up in the Golden Age of Henson’s career, watching Sesame Street and reruns of The Muppet Show, Muppet movies, Muppet holiday specials (taped on VHS, of course), and completely, utterly obsessed with the darker fantasy work of his later career: The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and the amazing StoryTeller series. My childhood was utterly infused with Henson’s humor, and the power of his imagination was a constant influence on my own, as it was for several generations of children (and plenty of adults, as well).

[Remembering Jim Henson]

Tragic news from Australia, as Starz has released a statement confirming the death of Spartacus: Blood and Sand star Andy Whitfield from non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Whitfield, a relative unknown when he was cast as Spartacus, impressed fans and critics alike with his intense, emotionally wrenching portrayal of a man tormented by his past and destined to lead a bloody uprising against the tyranny of all-powerful Rome.

In a statement to Entertainment Weekly, his co-star Lucy Lawless remembered Whitfield as “a gentle man who never said a bad word about anyone, a gifted photographer, engineer (no really!) and a brilliant actor. Andy’s incandescent film presence made men want to be him and women want to marry him.” Initially diagnosed with cancer while preparing for the second season of Spartacus, Whitfield battled back (appearing at San Diego Comic Con in 2010, where he was greeted by thunderous applause) only to relapse a few short months later; he was only 39, and leaves behind a wife and two children.

Whitfield will continue to be celebrated by fans for both his brooding, electric performances as well as our occasional glimpses of the man behind the scenes, in lighter moments. While his time in the spotlight was brief, Andy Whitfield will certainly be remembered as a great talent gone far, far too soon.

In case you’re still catching up on the plethora of movie trailers that premiered over the weekend at Comic Con, here’s your chance to check out The Knights of Badassdom, an upcoming horror comedy with a cast that reads like some kind of magical fanboy wishlist sprung to life. We’ve got the awesome Peter Dinklage (enough said), True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten (Jason Stackhouse, in shining armor), frequent Whedon muse Summer Glau, frequent Aaron Sorkin muse Joshua Malina (look, I know The West Wing isn’t SFF, but that doesn’t make it any less awesome), Community’s Danny Pudi (Abed! Playing a character named “Lando”!), the always likable Steve Zahn, and the brilliant Jimmi Simpson, who finally seems to be getting bigger roles after popping up on shows like Party Down, Psych, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia for the last few years….

[So, are gamers getting love from Hollywood, at long last?]

The New York Public Library kicked off its Sci-Fi Summer in style Tuesday night with its much-buzzed about “Speculating on Fiction” panel, featuring some of our favorite authors (and occasional Tor.com contributors) Lev Grossman, John Scalzi, Catherynne M. Valente, and Scott Westerfeld.

The event featured a stellar set of readings by each member of the panel, introduced by Gavin Grant of Small Beer Press and accompanied by original music courtesy of the multi-talented Brian Slattery, author of the upcoming Lost Everything, leading a four piece band. Lev Grossman set the bar exceedingly high with an excerpt from The Magician King (the sequel to The Magicians), coming out in August—it was clever, and intriguing, and left everyone wanting more, and it certainly started things off on a high note. Cat Valente read from the beginning of her gorgeous middle grade novel The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, which debuted on last week’s New York Times Best Sellers list.

[Below the fold: Westerfeld, Scalzi, Shatner impressions, and Night Dragons]

Wall-E is generally referred to as a children’s film, and I’m not going to argue: it’s an excellent children’s film—a classic, absolutely. I also happen to think that it’s an even better movie for adults, for whom its lessons are more poignant, possibly more resonant, and more necessary. Pixar has a knack for producing films which consistently operate on two different levels: one which speaks to a young audience without condescension or pandering, and one which reflects adult experience, rather than just exploiting nostalgia for idealized conceptions of childhood or simply spiking the cinematic punch with snarky, Grown-Ups Only pop culture references and in-jokes.

Movies like Wall-E and Up deftly evoke complicated emotional responses in adults in a way that most children’s films don’t, speaking to adults on their own level through smart, subtle storytelling that’s often amazingly, heartbreakingly simple. Consider the opening sequence of Up, for example, which has the power to make grown men break down and sob as if they’ve just been kicked in the heart, but doesn’t seem particularly traumatic for small children at the same time; it’s not that kids don’t “get it”—they just don’t necessarily react to the sequence in the same way that adults, carrying a little more emotional baggage into the theater, tend to respond.

[Below the fold: Charlie Chaplin, Hello, Dolly! and the making of an animated manifesto]

In the folklore of various cultures and ancient civilizations, rabbits have represented a kind of Trickster figure; in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean mythology, rabbits live on the moon. The Aztecs worshipped a group of deities known as the Centzon Totochtin, a group of 400 hard-partying rabbits who were the gods of drunkenness, and in a slightly more recent mythos, bunnies were the bête noir of a certain thousand-year-old former vengeance demon.

As we head into the weekend, I’d like to take a minute to pay tribute to some of the more memorable bunnies and assorted rabbit-like creatures who have hopped, time-traveled, and occasionally slaughtered their way through science fiction and fantasy, beginning (in no particular order), with everybody’s favorite hard-drinking, invisible lagomorph….

[Follow me down the SFF rabbit hole]

Okay! First impressions of the new Captain America trailer: he’s patriotic! He’s not overly fond of the Nazis. His superpowers include abs, and looking great without a shirt on. Tommy Lee Jones is on hand to gravely quote General Patton (which makes total sense, since TLJ is officially more American than an apple pie filled with beef jerky and wrapped in the Star-Spangled Banner). Patton silently salutes from grizzled soldier heaven. Stanley Tucci’s German accent is entertaining. Notice a quick appearance by Howard Stark (Mr. Tony Stark, Sr.) at 1:13. Hugo Weaving is not what you expect (but is he ever?). Motorcycles! Explosions! Attractive woman firing a handgun. Fin.

[Not fin]

HBO’s just released an intense new poster for Game of Thrones—which premieres on April 17^th, but in case you need further assurances that Winter is (finally) Coming, here’s Sean Bean as Ned Stark brooding on the Iron Throne…

Cartoonist and all-around Internet magician Dan Meth is back with The Fantasy World Map, featuring imaginary realms drawn from myth, legend, and classic literature to more contemporary fiction, television and movies: everything from Tolkien to Dr. Seuss, Sir Thomas More to the Krofft Brothers. This is actually the twelfth in Meth’s ongoing Series of Pop-Cultural charts; we wrote about the first installment here, and you can find the rest here (personally, I’m a big fan of his Futuristic Movie Timeline. Zardoz, FTW!).

Now I can spend the rest of my Friday planning out the perfect imaginary vacation—I’m thinking I’d start out in Neverland, then maybe take a pirate cruise down to Living Island (which I can only imagine is kind of like Ibiza, but with puppets). Not sure about Camelot, though—I hear it’s a silly place. So, where would you go first? And is there any place on your wishlist that didn’t make the map? (Besides Randland?)

Bridget McGovern now wonders if the Swamps of Sadness share a soggy border with the Bog of Eternal Stench (having naturally assumed, as a kid, that they were located somewhere near Newark).